~CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES~

JUDITH BARRINGTON is the author of three volumes of poetry, most recently Horses and the Human Soul. She teaches workshops in poetry and memoir across the U.S. and for The Poetry School in Europe, and is a web mentor for the University of Minnesota's Split Rock Program.

PAM BERNARD's most recent collection of poetry is Across the Dark. Another book, Blood Garden: an elegy for Raymond, is forthcoming from Turning Point. Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing, two Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowships in Poetry, and a MacDowell Fellowship. She is an adjunct professor at the New Hampshire Institute for Art.

CHRISTOPHER CESSAC's book of poems, Republic Sublime (Zoo Press, 2003) won the Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry. His work has appeared in Antioch Review, Black Warrior Review, Cimarron Review, Kenyon Review, Mudlark, Sycamore Review, and
elsewhere.

BARBARA CROOKER's poems have been published widely in magazines such as Beloit Poetry Journal, Christian Century, Christian Science Monitor, Denver Quarterly, Nimrod, Poetry International, Smartish Pace, and Tampa Review. She is the author of ten chapbooks, two of which won prizes in national competitions: Ordinary Life won the ByLine Chapbook competition in 2001 and Impressionism won the Grayson Books Chapbook competition in 2004. Radiance, her first full-length book, won the 2005 Word Press First Book competition and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize. Line Dance, her second book, is also published by Word Press. 

CHRISTINE CUCCIO received her MA in writing from Emerson College. Her poetry has been featured in such journals as Carolina Quarterly, North American Review, and New York Quarterly.

SUSAN ELBE is the author of Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Press), which received Honorable Mention for the Posner Poetry Book Prize, and Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press), a chapbook. Her poems also have appeared in many journals, including Ascent, Blackbird, Calyx, diode, MARGIE, North American Review, Salt Hill, and Smartish Pace. Among her awards and honors are the 2006 Lorine Niedecker Award, the Calyx Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize, and a Rowland Foundation residency at the Vermont Studio Center.

GARY FINCKE's publications of poems include Alaska Quarterly Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Gettysburg Review, Harper's, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and Shenandoah. He has published more than a dozen books of poetry and fiction.

ANN FISHER-WIRTH's third book of poems, Carta Marina, has just been published by Wings Press. Her other full-length collections of poetry are Blue Window and Five Terraces; she has also published a pair of chapbooks, The Trinket Poems and Walking Wu-Wei's Scroll. A new chapbook, Slide Shows, was runner-up in the 2008 Finishing Line chapbook competition and will appear in Winter 2009. With Laura-Gray Street, she is coediting Earth's Body, an international contemporary anthology of ecopoetry in English, which Trinity University Press will publish in 2010.  She teaches at the University of Mississippi and in Chatham University's brand new low residency MFA in Creative Writing.

WILLIAM FORD has published two books of poems, most recently Past Present Imperfect (Turning Point, 2006), and his poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Brilliant Corners, Cafe Review, Free Lunch, Iowa Review, and North American Review.

ELLEN GOLDSTEIN's work has appeared in various literary journals, including Measure, New Hampshire Review, Qarrtsiluni, Mid-American Review, and StorySouth. She was an editor for the anthology Letters to the World, published by Red Hen Press.

JOHN D. GROPPE, professor emeritus of English at Saint Joseph's College (Rensselaer, IN), has published poems, short stories, and essays in a number of magazines or anthologies.

PENNY HARTER is published widely in journals and anthologies, and her literary autobiography appears as an extended essay in Contemporary Authors. Her poems have recently appeared in Contemporary American Voices, Lips, Quarrtsiluni, Sea Stories, Tiferet, and Umbrella. Her books include The Night Marsh, Along River Road, Lizard Light: Poems From the Earth, and Buried in the Sky. Her illustrated alphabestiary for children, The Beastie Book, will be published in 2009 by Shenanigan Books. She has received three fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, as well as an award from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Mary Carolyn Davies Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the William O. Douglas Nature Writing Award.

GREGG HERTZLIEB is Director of the Brauer Museum of Art at Valparaiso University.  Hertzlieb is the editor of the books The Calumet Region: An American Place (Photographs by Gary Cialdella), published in 2009, and Domestic Vision: Twenty-Five Years of the Art of Joel Sheesley (2008), as well as a contributor to The Indiana Dunes Revealed: The Art of Frank V. Dudley (2006). He has been awarded the Edward L. Ryerson Traveling Fellowship by the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and a Conant Writing Award for Poetry from Millikin University.  His artwork has been exhibited widely, including at the Aron Packer Gallery, August House Studio, the Central School of Art and Design in London, Columbia College, Elgin Community College, the Goodman Theater, and Struve Gallery.

JULIE KANE is the author of Rhythm & Booze, a National Poetry Series winner and 2005 Poets' Prize finalist, and the co-editor of Umpteen Ways of Looking at a Possum: Critical and Creative Tributes to Everette Maddox, a finalist for the 2007 Southern Independent Booksellers' Alliance (SIBA) book award in poetry.  She teaches at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

NORBERT KRAPF taught for 34 years at Long Island University, where he directed the C.W. Post Poetry Center.  He is currently serving as the Indiana Poet Laureate. His recent work includes Bloodroot: Indiana Poems (Indiana University Press, 2008); a prose memoir, The Ripest Moments: A Southern Indiana Childhood (Indiana Historical Society Press, 2008); and a poetry and jazz CD with Monika Herzig, Imagine—Indiana in Music and Words (Acme Records, 2007). He also collaborated with Indiana photographer Darryl Jones in Invisible Presence (Indiana University Press, 2006).  Sweet Sister Moon, a collection of poetry, is forthcoming from WordTech Editions.

MICHAEL LEONG's poems and reviews have appeared in various journals, including Atlanta Review, Bird Dog, Jubilat, Marginalia, New Hampshire Review, Seattle Review, Snow Monkey, and Tin House.

JULIA LISELLA is the author of Terrain and a chapbook of poems, Love Song Hiroshima. She teaches writing and literature courses at Regis College in Massachusetts.

MICHAEL MEYERHOFER is the author of two books of poetry. His first book, Leaving Iowa, won the Liam Rector First Book Award. The second collection, Blue Collar Eulogies is published by Steel Toe Books.  His work also has appeared in Mid-American Review, North American Review, National Poetry Review, Ploughshares, River Styx, and other literary journals.

KAY MULLEN is a retired teacher, school and mental health counselor.  Her work has appeared in various journals, including Appalachia, Crab Creek Review, and New Works Review, as well as anthologies such as Tatoos on Cedar, Mute Note Earthward, Pontoon, Northwind, and others. She has two full-length poetry collections, Let Morning Begin (Caritas Communications, 2001) and A Long Remembering: Return to Vietnam (Foothills Publishing, 2006). In 2002, she received the William Stafford First Place Award from the Washington State Poets Association.  

JAMES OWENS is the author of two books of poetry, An Hour Is the Doorway (Black Lawrence Press) and Frost Lights a Thin Flame (Mayapple Press), both published in 2007.

ALLAN PETERSON is the author of All the Lavish in Common  (2005 Juniper Prize) and Anonymous Or  (Defined Providence Press Prize ) and four chapbooks. Recent journal publications include Bat City, Boston Review, Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, Iron Horse, Salamander, Sawbuck, Talking River Review, and Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry.

DOUG RAMSPECK's poetry collection, Black Tupelo Country, was selected as the 2007 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry and is published by BkMk Press (University of Missouri-Kansas City). He has had poems appear in numerous literary journals, including Confrontation Magazine, Connecticut Review, Hunger Mountain, Nimrod, Rattle, Seneca Review, and West Branch. He directs the Writing Center and teaches creative writing at The Ohio State University at Lima. 

D'ARCY RANDALL is a founder of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review. Her poems and essays have appeared in Antipodes, Nimrod, Poetry West, and elsewhere. She teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.

SUSAN RICH's third collection of poems, The Alchemist¹s Kitchen, is forthcoming from White Pine Press. Her poems have recently appeared in Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and Umbrella.

SUZANNE ROBERTS is the author of two collections of poetry, Shameless (Cherry Grove Collections, 2007) and Nothing to You (Pecan Grove Press, 2008). She writes and teaches in South Lake Tahoe, California.

DAVID ROTHMAN's poems appear in recent issues of Gettysburg Review, Hudson Review, The Journal, Literary Imagination, The Lyric, Many Mountains Moving, Tar River Poetry, and other journals. He has contributed essays in recent or current issues of Academic Questions ("The Crisis of Literacy and the Courage to Teach"), Contemporary Poetry Review (on William Butler Yeats), and Redactions (on W.S. Merwin). 

F. DANIEL RZICZNEK's first book of poems, Neck of the World, winner of the 2007 May Swenson Poetry Award, was published by Utah State University Press. He also is the author of a chapbook, Cloud Tablets (Kent State University Press, 2006). His poems have appeared in Agni, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Iowa Review, Passages North, New Republic, and elsewhere. He currently teaches English at Bowling Green State University.

JOANNIE STANGELAND is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, A Steady Longing for Flight, which won the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, and Weathered Steps, published by Rose Alley Press. Her work has most recently appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association and Pontoon.

JEANINE STEVENS's poems have appeared recently in Camas, Harpur Palate, Poesy, Poet Lore, Quercus, and South Dakota Review, among others. She was awarded first place in poetry from the Stockton Arts Commission and the Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference (College of the Redwoods).

TERESE SVOBODA's fifth book of poetry, Weapons Grade, will be published in the fall of 2009 by the University of Arkansas Press. Recent poems by her have appeared or are forthcoming in Agni, Gulf Coast, Denver Quarterly, and St. Petersburg Review.

ALISON TOWNSEND is the author of three books of poetry, And Still the Music, The Blue Dress, and What the Body Knows.  Her new collection, Persephone in America, won the 2008 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition and is forthcoming in 2009.  Her poetry and creative nonfiction appear widely in journals such as Arts & Letters, Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Southern Review.  She has won many awards, including a 2007 literary fellowship from the Wisconsin Arts Board, the 2007 Flume Press Chapbook contest, and a 2006 residency at the Virginia Center for the Arts.  She teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

INGRID WENDT, whose parents were each raised in German-speaking families in Valparaiso, Chile, and on a farm in southwest Michigan, spent the year 1994-1995 as a Senior Fulbright Professor in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, returning in 2004 and 2005 as a Fulbright Senior Specialist. She has won the Oregon Book Award in Poetry with Singing the Mozart Requiem, the Carolyn Kizer Award, and the Yellowglen Prize for her 2004 book, The Angle of Sharpest Ascending. Her fourth full-length book, Surgeonfish, received the 2004 Editions Prize. Her other books include Moving the House (poetry); From Here We Speak: An Anthology of Oregon Poetry; In Her Own Image: Women Working in the Arts; and Starting with Little Things: A Guide to Writing Poetry in the Classroom. She divides her time between Eugene and Seal Rock, Oregon, with her husband, poet and writer Ralph Salisbury.

KAREN J. WEYANT is a recent recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship.  Her first chapbook, Stealing Dust, has just been published by Finishing Line Press. Her work also may be seen or is forthcoming in 5 AM, Anti-, Barn Owl Review, Comstock Review, Slipstream, and Minnesota Review.  She teaches at Jamestown Community College in Jamestown, New York.

LESLEY WHEELER's publications include the chapbook Scholarship Girl, Voicing American Poetry: Sound and Performance from the 1920s to the Present, and Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-Po LISTSERV (co-edited with Moira Richards and Rosemary Starace).  She teaches at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.